Sanford Web Design is a leader in Organic Search Engine Optimization, meta tag composition, high-quality inbound link network creation, and pay-per-click campaign management. Our strategies have successfully promoted dozens of web sites to the top of their preferred search term (keywords) organic rankings on Google and other search engines. We stake our reputation as an SEO company on the results of our work.

As an SEO company, we’ve also done organic search engine optimization all by itself, without a visual redesign. Let us put our expertise to work for your web site today with a SEO expansion, or at least a meta tag, architecture, current search engine ranking and inbound links review. e

Call us today for a free introductory consultation or fill out our convenient form on the contact page for a complimentary site SEO analysis. Our headquarters is located in Sanford, NC. However we will be moving to the Hampstead, NC and Wilmington, NC area shortly. Please call for an appointment so we can discuss the particulars of your marketing and SEO challenges.

It’s no secret that LinkedIn is widely considered one of the top social media platforms for B2B marketers.

As illustrated in the fourth annual B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report, put out by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 91% of B2B content marketers are using LinkedIn to distribute their content. And in Holger Schulze’s 2013 B2B Content Marketing Trends Report, LinkedIn tops the list as the most effective social media platform for delivering content.

Today’s Google logo is a hat-tip to British logician and philosopher, and inventor of the Venn diagram, John Venn on his 180th birthday.

Born on this date in 1834, Venn came up with the idea of using circles to sort groups to illustrate their relationship to each other sometime around 1880

Offering users two circles, each with its own group of categories, the interactive logo delivers an answer combining category pairings via a Venn-diagram. For example, choosing “Sea Life” from the first group of categories, and “Has a Shell” from the second, gives you a sea turtle as shown in the following video:

Once the Venn diagram result is displayed, users can then go to “John Venn” search results, replay to choose new categories, or share their Venn-diagram result via Facebook, Twitter or Google

Starting today, some customers will begin to see the new Bing Ads user interface announced last week. All customers will have the new look in the coming weeks.

The new interface design is cleaner with fewer competing colors and a bigger report canvas. The focus of the new design is to make data visualization and help customers be more efficient, said Jamie Chung a Program Manager with the Bing Ads UI team by phone last week.

Chung says the look is the result of a process recently adopted by the engineering team that starts with hearing from customers rather than designing a product first and then getting feedback second. The new interface will have areas for users to be able to communicate directly with engineers.

Feedback already incorporated into the new interface in the past weeks are a tighter header space so more data can be seen on the canvas. The left navigation bar can be minimized so more columns are visible on the screen without having to scroll.

Looking for the next showing of “Jersey Boys”? If you’re searching for movie times, chances are you’ll have better luck finding them on Bing than searching for a movie on Google.

After the producers for the documentary “America: Imagine the World Without Her” accused Google of keeping the film’s showtimes out of Google’s search results, we conducted our own test to see how accurate Google and Bing were when it came to finding movie showtimes.

For movie title searches, both Google and Bing aim to display showtimes at the top of their search results, like this when searching “Tammy” on Google:

Google’s implementation of the EU’s new Right To Be Forgotten mandate has been difficult, to say the least. Which is why Google may have decided to now solicit feedback on their implementation through a new Advisory Council.

Google released a page at google.com/advisorycouncil that is asking Google users to submit their thoughts and feedback on the Court of Justice of the European Union mandate for the Right To Be Forgotten.

The question posed by Google is:

How should one person’s right to be forgotten be balanced with the public’s right to know?

Google then explains in more detail:

A recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union found that European law gives people the right to ask search engines like Google to remove results for queries that include their name.

For each of these requests, we’re required to weigh, on a case-by-case basis, an individual’s right to be forgotten with the public’s right to know.

We want to strike this balance right. This obligation is a new and difficult challenge for us, and we’re seeking advice on the principles Google ought to apply when making decisions on individual cases. That’s why we’re convening a council of experts.

We’re just getting started, but during this process we also want to hear your input, too — this is all about your rights online, and the Internet provides an incredible forum for discussion and debate.

This is then followed by a feedback form that asks for their feedback in an open box. It also asks them if they want Google to follow up with them on this topic and if Google is allowed to publish what they’ve written.

By now, you’ve probably seen (or at least heard about) Google’s recent video and new white paper about Quality Score in AdWords. In fact, when I first heard about the updated Hal Varian video, I was a bit surprised, given that Google hasn’t bothered to update it for about five years!

Friday, July 11, 2014

This could get interesting. Last month, we saw Google running a test that ranked product listing ads (PLAs) by ratings and reviews in search results. Now, a new test groups and ranks products by price.

In the screenshot below, provided by CPC Strategy, PLAs are grouped in two pricing stacks — one for “Up to $30″ and a second for “Over $30″. The products in the first group are shown in order by price. Oddly, there is one outlier in the second group — the $36.95 sandal from Nordstrom is listed after two higher priced shoes from Keen.

According to Cult of Mac Apple is doing something very interesting with iOS 8 Maps. It’s giving people a choice of apps to use for directions.

A GIF in the article shows that once a destination is located users will be able to choose directions from, presumably, any mapping-related app installed on their iPhones:

Starting in iOS 8, users will be able to run a search for locations in Apple Maps and use either Apple’s own driving and walking directions, or switch directly to another app already installed on your device via a simplified menu.

It also shows users other mapping apps available for download — so it effectively becomes an app-discovery mechanism as well.

All of the project’s main goals were achieved with the aid of the consultants. It was easy to communicate with them and they laid-out the project in a clear and concise manner.

Baytech Web Design made it very easy to make requests and see results. It was just up to me to check to see if issued had been fixed. And they always ended up being fixed.

Baytech Web Design was fantastic in the implementation of our new Web site. It was not a small task, by any means, but the whole team was quick to implement and quick to fix issues that arose. Even when we added extra work during the implementation, it was done efficiently and seamlessly. I never once felt like we were waiting on them for anything.

s Regional Sales Manager, Sara Mahmoodi. We specialize in translating conceptual ideas into a technical specification that will be profitable for our clients. Its such an exciting process to bring those ideas to life.

In June of 2010, Poggled released their beta site. The Chicago startup has since continued to grow, recently securing $5.6M of Series B funding from New Enterprise Associates, the same venture capitalist firm that invested in Groupon.

The Poggled site is now Chicagos largest nightlife website, offering exclusive discounted drink deals and party packages to users. The Series B funding will support the companys continued growth and market-by-market rollout in the coming weeks and months.

We are constantly working with entrepreneurs to develop innovative sophisticated web applications, says Baytech

that enables businesses to find software solutions through their application marketplaces. Investors in the debt round were not disclosed. The company did not say how the funding proceeds would be used.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

With Shopping Campaigns becoming the default campaign type for running Product Listing Ads on Google by the end of August, the search giant has issued a best practices whitepaper to help marketers make the transition.

The main points the paper dives into are product feed optimization and updates, Shopping campaign structure, bidding and mobile recommendations. Much of the best practices haven’t necessarily changed from the original PLA recommendations — use relevant titles and high-quality images — but there are good baseline reminders such as limiting title length to 50 characters to avoid truncation.

The recommendations on how to structure the new Shopping campaigns, though, will be particularly useful for marketers beginning to transition their campaigns. Google wants advertisers to think of their campaigns like a storefront and suggests focusing on product lines, profit margins and best sellers. Sounds simple when you see it, but they provide a good framework for thinking about how to set up new campaigns.

And, Google really wants merchants to be thinking about the mobile impact on their business and their Shopping campaigns. Advertisers with mobile landing pages should update their feeds for the new mobile landing page attribute, for example.

With new product feed specifications issued just yesterday, merchants will need to be paying close attention to their feeds and Shopping campaigns in the coming months to ensure their accounts are ready for the holiday push.

The whitepaper can be downloaded from Google directly or from its solution center on Search Engine Land.

Google has introduced the ability to search for musicians on Android phones and then have apps with more information about them open up.

The new feature is integrated into Google Search and works with the following apps:

Google PlayYouTubeiHeart RadioSpotifyTuneInRdio

The feature only works for musicians. For example, a search for Katy Perry (as shown in the example above) brings up an information box about her, with links to supported music apps. Tapping on an app brings you into the artist’s page there. In contrast, a search for Perry’s “California Gurls” brings up no such links.

Right now, the feature also seems inconsistent. Links for Perry showed up when searching using the search box widget on a Samsung Galaxy S5; they didn’t when searching from Chrome directly. The YouTube link launched correctly into Katy Perry’s page on YouTube; the Google Play Music link didn’t load Google Play Music at all, though it did work correctly on a Nexus 10.

Outside the information box, links still open pages as has traditionally been the case.

The Bigger Picture

Google has faced an existential threat from apps in mobile. Its all-purpose functionality on the PC didn’t translate into mobile; and the company was in danger of losing its internet “gatekeeper” role as smartphones become primary internet devices.

Google Now, voice search and other initiatives, such as the effort to index apps and deep-link app content, have been partly successful attempts to reinsert search into the center of the mobile user experience. This is more true for Android than iOS, however.

Numerous consumer surveys assert the value and reach of mobile search. But frequency and engagement are less on the PC because of apps (Maps is an exception). Against that backdrop Google has introduced the ability to search for music and then play it immediately in an installed app on your (Android) phone.

This is a useful capability but it’s important to see this in the context of what Google is trying to do more broadly in mobile search: make it more relevant by delivering “answers” and structured content in lieu of a list of links.

These are moves of necessity by Google, packaged as better serving consumers or doing “cool” things with mobile search. It is in part this behavior that has got Google’s critics and rivals so upset, as the company moves further away from its traditional SERP.

German news publishers are picking up where the Belgians left off, a now not-so-proud tradition of suing Google for being included in its listings rather than choosing to opt-out. This time, the publishers want an 11% cut of Google’s revenue related to them being listed.

The news comes from Jeff Jarvis, who writes that a group representing about half the major news publishers in Germany have a started an arbitration process demanding that Google pay 11% of revenue related to listing links to and descriptions of their content.

The actual suit (in German) from the VG Media industry group is here, which demands up to 11% of all gross sales worldwide (plus VAT!) of revenue related to its content, as of August 1, 2013.

Beyond What Leistungsschutzrecht Allows?

From Spiegel (again in German, and working off a Google translation), VG Media includes twelve publishers including giant Axel Springer. The story also suggests that the publishers feel they have a right to demand license fees because Google’s use goes beyond a new German copyright law created last year.

That law, referred to as “ancillary copyright” or “Leistungsschutzrecht,” allowed search engines free use of single words or very small text excerpts. Apparently, the VG Media group still feels there’s use happening where payment can be demanded.

The move produced two major absurdities. First, it’s incredibly difficult to even know how much revenue would be generated, if any, by these links.

The Difficulty In Calculating A Publisher’s Cut

Within Google News itself, there are no ads. So as Jarvis writes, “Are the publishers seeking 11% of 0?” But news content does appear outside Google News, within regular Google searches, where ads can be present.

To figure an 11% payment here, the publishers would apparently want to know any time their content appeared with ads on search results pages. Then, if any of those ads produced revenue, they want 11% of that.

It’s a difficult but not impossible task for Google to figure this out. It already tells publishers through Google Webmaster Tools what the visibility of their pages are like. It could clearly tell for a particular publisher if pages are showing in the top results.

More work would be required to tell if a publisher was present where there was an ad click. There’s an even bigger debate on whether a publisher being one of 10 to 30 links that might appear on a page should be given the entire credit for a click and thus 11% of revenue earned by it.

Publishers Aren’t Forced Into Google

All that is likely to get argued in arbitration. But that leads to the second big absurdity. Google isn’t forcing the publishers to be in Google at all.

Let’s do a little history.

Back in 2006, Belgian news publishers sued Google over their inclusion in the Google News, demanding that Google remove them. They never had to sue; there were mechanisms in place where they could opt-out.

After winning the initial suit, Google dropped them as demanded. Then the publications, watching their traffic drop dramatically, scrambled to get back in. When they returned, they made use of the exact opt-out mechanisms (mainly just to block page caching) that were in place before their suit, which they could have used at any time.

The case carried on for six years in total. In the end, it was settled in what’s become common when Google is in disputes with publishers. Google pledges some nebulous collaboration that will support the industry. See also the

The agenda is live and we’ve opened up our “speaking pitch” form for SMX Milan, November 13-14, 2014 at the Meliá Milano Hotel.

View the agenda here: SMX Milan 2014 Agenda

And the speaking pitch instructions and form here: SMX Milan 2014 Agenda Speaking Pitch Form

The speaking pitch form closes Friday, July 18, 2014, so don’t delay. We’ll notify everyone who pitches whether they’ve been selected or not by early August.

Improving your odds of being selected to speak

As you might guess, interest is high in speaking at SMX conferences. We literally sift through hundreds of submissions to select speakers for the show. Here are some tips that will increase your chances of being selected.

Pitch early: Submitting your pitch early gives you a better chance of being selected. Coordinators accept speakers as soon as they identify a pitch that they think best fits the session, just like colleges that use a rolling admissions policy. So pitching early increases the likelihood you’ll be chosen. The speaking pitch form closes Friday, July 18, 2014.

Use the form: The speaker pitch form is the way to ask to speak. There’s helpful information there about how your pitch should be written and what it should contain. Please read this. Following these simple guidelines will greatly improve your odds of being selected.

Write it yourself and be specific: Lots of pitches come in that are obviously written by staff or are not specific to the session. These are two of the most effective ways to ensure that your pitch is ignored. If you’re a thought leader, write the pitch yourself… and make certain that it is 100% focused on the session topic.

“Throw your best pitch:” We’re limiting the number of pitches to three per person, so please pitch for the session(s) where you really feel you’ll offer SMX attendees your best.

We’re happy to answer any questions you may have, but no, we really, really don’t want to get pitches via email. Since we’re working with coordinators and need to have all pitches in our system, we’ll just ask you to submit the pitch through the form anyway, wasting everyone’s time.

Again, thanks for your interest and support, and hope to see you at SMX Milan 2014!

Advance your internet marketing skills. Attend one of six comprehensive workshops being held in conjunction with Search Marketing Expo – SMX East.

These workshops provide:

comprehensive instruction on a search marketing topic critical to business success;an intimate learning experience with a small group of your peers;access to expert presenters, each a rock star in his/her field.

This year’s topics:

Social Media Distribution for SEO: The New Link Building: With search engines using social signals in organic results, and social media networks charging for comprehensive distribution, it is more challenging than ever to ensure you are reaching your target audience. We’ll share the secret sauce of paid and organic tactics that attract site visitors and makes your SERP rankings skyrocket.

Advanced AdWords Training: Boost your PPC campaigns with this full day of AdWords best practices and advanced strategies. We’ll give you step-by-step instructions to increase your Quality Score, learn how to sync your ad copy with both your keywords and buying cycle stages, and plenty more.

International Search Summit: Extend your international reach with tactics from a stellar global panel of internet marketing experts. Attendees will leave with real, actionable solutions to their most burning questions on international SEO.

Bruce Clay SEO Training: Constant changes to algorithms, search features and spam detection keep you on your toes and your ranking in flux. Learn techniques that will help you improve your site, rankings and visibility from leading SEO expert Bruce Clay.

In-house SEO Exchange: Join us for an all-interactive workshop created to meet the unique needs and challenges in-house search marketers face, including technical tricks, organizational management, reporting metrics and maximizing your SEO budget. This workshop is for in-house marketers only; all registrants will be verified.

Monday, June 23, 2014

Last week, Google started rolling out the new Google My Business platform to much applause from the industry. Several experts have provided excellent coverage already (thanks, Danny Sullivan and Mike Blumenthal)

Many local businesses today are overwhelmed by the variety of local marketing choices available. Unlike the old days when a small handful of advertising outlets would cover the majority of your audience, the sheer volume of marketing options has seemingly flattened the reach of each advertising channel.

Business owners see all the different ways that consumers are seeking out, discovering and considering local businesses, and they don’t know where to start.

The Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors panel at the recent SMX Advanced show stimulated some fresh thinking for me on the role of content analysis and SEO.

In particular, Marcus Tober of Searchmetrics shared some interesting data from one of their latest studies.

What I’d like to discuss here is the notion of co-occurrence analysis (which is available in Searchmetrics Suite as Content Optimization).

What Is Co-Occurrence Analysis?

In the world of keywords, this refers to an analysis of what words appear most commonly on a page. Imagine you create a page on women’s shoes. You can then analyze the content on the page to see what words are most common. For example, the results of the analysis for your page might look like this table here:

By claiming that paid search is largely “ineffective,” eBay has attracted a lot of attention and buzz with media outlets repeating the findings.

Anyone who isn’t familiar with eBay’s history of throw-it-at-the-wall-and-watch-what-happens paid search advertising strategy may be able to take the company’s final release of a report that first made the rounds last year at face value. Those familiar with eBay’s paid search efforts (i.e., “Bid on Cancer now”) have taken the study with a grain of salt, if not discounted it outright.

The problem isn’t with the research or testing, it’s the fact that the study relies on eBay’s paid search campaigns and then proceeds to extrapolate the findings to the effectiveness of paid search for large brands in general– as if eBay’s paid search results are a proxy for all major brands.

A look at the historical ad archive in SEMRush provides a sampling of the types of keywords eBay’s ads were showing on and the Dynamic Keyword Insertion at work in both the ad headlines and ad copy in 2012, when the study took place. (Note that SEMRush displays archived ads the way they would appear today with the yellow “Ad” icon.)

These ads below — for Winning Lotto Numbers, Scanners Police, Pink Roses In A Vase and Base Ball Babe Ruth — are from the January 2012 archive.